sustain:if:able kiwi

emerging church postcard update

The emerging church postcard series is still open. So far I have had postcards from New Zealand, Australia, UK, Scandanavia, and enthusiastic conversation with Canada and South America. I will be blogging the postcards I have got from 1 January, and will run them until I run out (or the end of January), whichever is sooner. So if you’re non-US and emerging then read on …

I am collecting a series of postcards from the edge. To qualify just send me at steve at emergentkiwi dot org dot nz;
a) 1 photo of your emerging community this year;
plus a paragraph answer to these 4 questions;
b) how were you as an emerging community birthed?;
c) what do you as an emerging community value?;
d) what music track sums up your year;
e) what was your best mission moment in 05?

During January I will be post your image and responses as a series of postcards05 on my blog. Feel free to use the image and spread the word.

Oh, I nearly forgot. You need to be an emerging church outside the US. Sorry but I’m tired of the UScentrism of the emerging church blog world. Postcards05 is not for Americans. It’s a blog-stake in the ground; a visual reminder that God is active outside the bounds of America.

Why postcards05? Darren interviewed me last week in relation to my out of bounds church? book. (He reviewed the book in May here). My book is based on a series of 8 postcards, posted from around the Western world. I write “postcards” from emerging churches around the Western world, and then seek in the chapter following the “postcard” to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by the emerging church.

The last chapter of the book, completed in May 04, postcard 9, invited people to write their own “emerging church” postcards. So during Darren’s interview he asked me where I would like to be writing postcards from today. I replied from here; here and here. Darren then asked me where I would like to receive emerging church postcards from. I said France, because I’d love to see the emerging church turn back the tide of secularity in Europe, and a mixed ethnic church plant in Serbia, because I’d love to see the emerging church embrace mission in a country riven by religious and racial tensions, like Serbia.

This morning I thought, wow, maybe it could actually happen. Hence postcards05.